


Father's Day

by sabinelagrande



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Backstory, Child Abuse, Childhood, Community: house_fest, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-25
Updated: 2007-06-25
Packaged: 2017-10-05 06:02:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/38518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabinelagrande/pseuds/sabinelagrande
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cold reflections on a Sunday morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Father's Day

He traces Kilroy in the spilt salt on the table, waiting for the time to pass.

This is his father's favorite diner, so he's horribly unfamiliar and uncomfortable here. His mother shoved the two of them out of the house, knowing he'd been up all night drinking, saying how good it would be for him to take his father out for the holiday.

His father gives the waitress an almost untoward smile that she readily returns. It fades when she looks at him, moodily bent over the table. His father orders for the two of them, all smiles and slick charm, calling the waitress by name. She looks a little misty, and he's afraid for a long moment that she's going to say something she thinks is sweet, something about how he's so wonderful to take his wonderful father to breakfast on such a wonderful day. Maybe she's smarter than she looks, because she just smiles some more and goes.

His father talks at him for a while. He looks up, nodding at all the right places but not paying any attention, too tired for a fight. His father isn't exactly lecturing him, but it's not really a conversation either. It's just the way he talks, which is just like how he thinks: everyone else is slightly inferior for lack of being him, and it's just his duty to let them know how they should behave. The one good thing in the whole situation is that the waitress hovers with the coffee, keeping it fresh and copious.

They eat in silence. He tears through his ham and eggs, needing something on his stomach other than liquor and bitterness. He looks up to find a disapproving expression on his father's face; he doesn't need to wonder if he'll be punished for the infraction. Suddenly willful, he eats faster.

Over the pie that he can't understand anybody eating with breakfast, he lets his mind drift. His father is telling the same story that he tells on every father-son occasion, a long, heartwarming yarn about a fishing boat and a new tackle box. He can recite it forwards, backwards, and sideways, and so tries to make his glazed-over stare pass for filial devotion.

There's a counter story in his mind, something that breaks down the kodachrome dream of his father's story. He was ten. They were living with his grandparents for a summer between deployments, and his father took him fishing every weekend in his grandfather's big bass boat. It was something like paradise.

Then he made a stupid mistake, the kind of thing a ten year old does, and his grandfather's new reel ended up at the bottom of the lake. His grandfather had laughed and bought a new one, but his father wasn't satisfied. He spent a long, burning night sleeping in that boat, besieged by mosquitoes and crying quietly into his shirt.

He always hated fishing after that, but not for what his father had done. He got this idea into his head that if he could strip away everything that made him like his father, he might not become the same, might not need to be worshiped and feared to be happy. Fishing was first, then the rest of his hobbies, his favorite foods, everything right down to the way he tied his tie. The more he could separate himself, the less chance he would have of crushing the people around him.

His greatest fear is that he will wake up one day and it won't have worked.

His father finishes the story, and he makes appropriately maudlin comments. His father pays the check, with a big tip on the table for Smiley and friendly waves for all the regulars.

Greg keeps his hand in his jacket pocket as they leave, keeping his fingers and his heart clenched around the letter inside from Johns Hopkins. If he can only keep widening the distance, maybe even he will escape unscarred.


End file.
